Enterprise-D's Spotlights (TNG "Pegasus")

In TNG's "Pegasus," we learned that the Enterprise-D has... steerable spotlights.

The spotlights made for interesting visual effects, which is no doubt why were added for the episode, but in-universe, what purpose would they serve? The ship's various sensors are already capable of gathering far more information than any spotlights would reveal.

But visuals are important to Starfleet nevertheless, otherwise they wouldn't bother to light up the starships and their pennants.

I'm sure the lights would be useful when somebody else besides the starship herself is at work. Say, they'd be an excellent aid for spacewalks and work pod operations, or for inspecting and handling objects in the ship's tractor beams before they are moved to or from the ship's holds. Apart from that, though, it would probably still be standard procedure to illuminate any starships or other objects encountered unless they are polite enough to illuminate themselves. Sensors may be fine for navigating, docking and so forth, but the heroes still want to see what they are up against.

As Freud would say sometimes a lightbulb is simply a lightbulb. Not everything has to be technobabbled to the extreme. Prehaps its an array of some kind of LED lights made from exotic materials. Or maybe some kind of high energy plasma-based florescent light source.

No matter how advanced the equipment, humans stay humans and so they want/need windows, gravity, up&down being the same as on planets etc etc and of course switch on the lights when flying into the dark.

Also, the TNG Tech Manual mentions something about mooring tractors built along with the RCS thrusters. Perhaps these are low-level tractor beams that in Spacedock's case, keeps ships still (but will break if a ship begins to move as in Star Trek: 3) but in the Galaxy Class case, it keeps the ship from bumping into walls in such confined spaces.